November was Eskom’s darkest hour. All 650 of them

South Africa has experienced 192,720 minutes of load shedding so far, according to data released by EskomSePush on Wednesday.

According to the load shedding app, that’s 200% more than any other year.

In terms of the intensity, stage 2 load shedding dominated the year, with 1363 hours, while November experienced 650 hours of power cuts – which is 27 days of darkness.

Stage 4 load shedding was implemented for 889 hours this year, followed by stage 3 load shedding with 586 hours.

Stage 6 load shedding

Eskom has announced that stage 6 load shedding will continue to be implemented until Friday morning at 5am, whereafter it will be reduced to stage 5 until Saturday morning.

“Since Tuesday night, breakdowns of two generating units at Grootvlei Power Station occurred, as well
as a unit each at Arnot, Duvha, Kendal, Kriel and Tutuka power stations. In addition, two units at Arnot,
a unit each at Camden, Kendal and Kriel power stations have been delayed in returning to service,” said spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha in a statement.

A unit at Matla Power Station returned to service late last night, he said.

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“We currently have 4 984MW on planned maintenance, while another 19 052MW of capacity is
unavailable due to breakdowns.

“As previously communicated, due to the depletion of the budget to acquire diesel for the Open Cycle
Gas Turbines, Eskom has been forced to strictly preserve the remaining diesel for any extreme
emergency situations such as multiple, simultaneous trips of generators. The pumped storage dam
levels also need to be replenished during this load shedding.

“The refuelling and maintenance outage starting tonight, as well as the long-term operation project of
Unit 1 of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, together with the October chimney failure that has forced
three generation units offline at Kusile Power Station, will further reduce available generation capacity
and exacerbate the occurrence of load shedding over the next 6 -12 months.”

The power utility has requested the public to exercise patience and tolerance.

“Load shedding is implemented only as a last resort in view of the shortage of generation capacity and
the need to attend to breakdowns.”

READ MORE: More pain as Eskom ramps up load shedding to stage 6